Online Trading E-trade and Datek turning direct access?

Lately online trading firm such as Datek and Etrade are giving their pattern trader customers the ability to route their orders directly. Such as the new E*trade Pro. I was wondering how is this different than other direct access platform. Is it slower to execute an order? Or is it about the same? Also why do they break the order into small execution. For example when you execute 3000 shares of xyz stock. It's broken down to 1000, 300, 700, 500, 500. Each execute at different time not all at once. This really bugs me because it's really slow. Does other platform such as MB-Trading or IB do that. Where an order is chop into small pieces of execution? Please comment thanks.

Sorry, I have no energy to discuss the lameness that is E-trade be it Power E-trade, E-Trade Pro or what ever. What do you pay for a limit order? What ever it is, you can get the same or better with a real Direct Access platform so why even deal with it in the first place?! The only previous excuse was commission cost (not an issue anymore) and/or platform complexity. With the Tradescape like net based DAT platforms ($7.95 max trade for TS) you have the same simplistic browser based interface with smart routing if you want to make it totally brainless....but with true direct access. Note I do not trade with Tradescape and never did/would......but for anyone who still trades with E-Trade/Ameridtrade/CSFB direct, etc., I will never understand why you would stay with them.

I know for pattern trader using e*trade pro it's no longer just a browser base platform. It's actually is a software base download with java realtime execution. I try the Interactive Broker TWS and it seem like it's also java. I'm just curious if both platforms are java base software than which one is faster than which? excluding all the fancy features just focus on execution time of orders ....

etrade sucks. not only is their platform a joke, their executions pathetic, and their commissions a total ripoff, but a long time ago when i opened an account with them (before i was interested in trading) i wanted to close the account, and it took a better business bureau complaint for me to get my money back from them.